Duke Criticises Wild Life Killers

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29844, 9 June 1962, Page 13

Duke Criticises Wild Life Killers

(N .ZJ»A .-Reuter—Copyrig hf) NEW YORK. June 7. Some of the world’s animal species were being killed off by a "get-rich-quick-at-any-price mob.” the Duke of Edinburgh told a world wild-life fund dinner in New York.

The Duke was the guest of honour at the dinner, arranged to launch a fund in the United States to preserve the world's wildlife.

He described poachers, who are threatening the extermination of many biggame animals in Africa, as "killers for profit.” The Duke attended the dinner. in New York’s Waldorf Astoria Hotel, after flying from Toronto for a five-hour visit before returning to London. “Six hundred elephants a year are being killed because the game laws cannot be enforced and people want chessmen or a new set of billiard balls,” he said. “In Africa and elsewhere,’’ he said, "these thoughtless exploiters are slaughtering vast numbers of elephants merely because they can get 50 cents per lb for their ivory from a middle man who sells it to a receiver for double that

"He, in turn, gets two dollars a pound from an illegal dealer who charges the customer five dollars a pound—the official price.”

“Status-seekers” The Duke also hit out at "status . seekers” people “like the eagle chasers and the young car-borne bravados of Arabia.

“The bald eagle in North America was being chased and killed by people in light aeroplanes who seem to think that it is smart to have their feathers and claws,” he said “The Arabian oryx owes its fate to the fact that some Arabs believe they must prove their manhood by killing an oryx so that they will inherit its legendary courage and virility. “This may have made a little sense years ago, in the days when mankind was tyrannised by superstition, and the odds were a bit more even. "But today, when up to 300

car-borne parties go out together to get-brave-quick bv mowing down oryxes with tommy-guns. the whole thing becomes sheer idiocy." The Duke said “The Times” correspondent in the Lebanon had reported there was “no longer a dawn chorus of birds, because young men with shotguns and airguns prowl round the olive groves every morning and evening shooting everything that moves. You may well ask why. “Merely so that they can swagger back to the cities with tiny, sparrow - sired birds dangling from their belts—a sort of Middle Eastern version of the moose on the mudguard. "Badges of Barbarity”

"Supposedly symbols of achievement—ln fact, they are badges of barbarity."

The "status-seekers" were all over the world, he Mid. "Who hasn't beard the man boasting, in the office, or the club about his latest hunting or fishing success not because he gets any pleasure out of it, but merely because he thinks it is the thing to do." Lhe Duke said. “And if the truth were known, how often was the animal shot by the guide, and the fish bought from the deepfreeze locker of the local fishmonger?” He said killing for sport might be condemned, "but, at least, the sportsman is concerned that the source of his sport is not destroyed. The status-seeker couldn't care less ”